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World Poetry Day

Today is World Poetry Day so I thought I would share two poems for all my fellow genealogists.

Your Ancestors

If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
Would you be proud of them? Or don’t you really know?
Strange discoveries are often made, in climbing the family tree.
Sometimes one is found in line who shocks the progeny.

If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
Perhaps there might be one or two you wouldn’t care to know.
Now turn the question right about and take another view.
When you shall meet your ancestors, will they be proud of you?

Author Unknown

Dear Ancestor

Your tombstone stands among the rest; neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out on polished, marble stone.
It reaches out to all who care; it is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist; you died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you in flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse entirely not our own.
Dear Ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago.
Spreads out among the ones you left who would have loved you so.

I wonder as you lived and loved, I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot, and come to visit you.